The Amazing Grace fiddle notes are comments I make here, not musical notation. Fiddle notes might be tablature, but not musical notation targeted for fiddle.

Dale Morris had a very interesting approach to Amazing Grace. He talked about this when I attended the Texarkana Fiddle Camp way back when. (It was the first year of the Mark O’Connor Camp, whenever that was. I attended both.)

He said that he liked to slur notes together if they represented one word. The first word in the song is ‘amazing’. It is given one note for each syllable. Usually you hear this played with three bows. And that’s the way I’ve published the tune.

His reasoning is good and musical. If you are a beginner, though, it’s a little awkward to get the three notes together in one bow. Since I give this tune to beginners, I make it easier and more conventional.

If you are an intermediate or advanced player, you can stretch this first part out in one bow. In fact, you may choose to do a juicy shift to third position on the third note.

I’m showing the three ways of handling this beginning of the tune in the tabs below. Further along is a link to an mp3 file demonstrating the sound.

You will see an ornamented version of the song in the first fiddle tab chart. Even beginners are encouraged to push into new territory.

Now here is a fragment to show the beginning with the slur covering the first three notes.

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7 thoughts on “Amazing Grace Fiddle Notes and Recording”

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Thank you for mentioning my name in conjunction with Amazing Grace. I’m not sure, however, that I was understood correctly in the matter of “bow slurring”..
In Amazing Grace, ONLY WORDS with slurs should be slurred with the bow………….In the beginning word Amazing……….three separate syllables, the last, “zing” would be a bow slur…..as it is with vocal. The next slur would occur in the line a wretch like me………, “a” is two note played with a slur. Thanks so much. Dale